Posts Tagged: Someone to Turn To

Taking Narcan Training is Taking Care of Community

I found out about the Narcan training when I was a part of a board in my community. Someone came to a meeting and asked us if we wanted to learn how to use Narcan. I said, “Yes.” I was motivated to take the training because I knew people that use drugs and I wanted to learn how to save them in case of an overdose.

We need to take care of the people in our community — because if we don’t, who will? We have to make sure our community is safe to live in. Taking the Narcan training is one way to contribute to collective care.

‘Our First Priority Is Making Sure People Are OK’

Fear of the family policing system can prevent families from accessing needed resources and support. Through community-led mutual aid, community members support each other, often responding more quickly than systems and without intrusive processes or the threat of a report to ACS for not having food or resources for your family.

Here, Kelvin Taitt, co-founder of East Brooklyn Mutual Aid and a community organizer in the Ocean Hill and Brownsville areas of Brooklyn, New York, discusses how mutual aid is different from services through the system, building relationships, keeping resources in the community and supporting investment in Black-owned businesses.

Someone To Turn To: A Vision for Creating Networks of Parent Peer Care

This Insights paper presents Rise’s vision for a peer network of collective care by and for parents. This fall, Rise created a parent Peer Vision Team to explore building a peer care model that can strengthen families while reducing contact with the family policing system.

Nationwide and in New York City, where Rise is based, it’s crucial to broadly reorganize supports for families so that accessing resources and services does not put parents at risk of state intervention in their families. Government dollars should target community conditions, not families. This report shares a vision for one critical component of strong communities: networks of peer support and community care.

Alone in the System – Would my son have come home sooner if someone had taken the time to know me?

I was 19 when I was arrested for hitting my 2-year-old son with a belt.

What I did wasn’t right and it wasn’t how I usually treated my son. Usually I loved him to death and spoiled him rotten. I had never hit him before. But that night my son got out of his crib and ran out of the apartment while I was taking a shower.

I felt so shocked and scared that I … Read More

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